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And while David Fincher's thriller for the brain, The Social Network, was ultimately beaten last year by The King's Speech, both the director and a new film, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, are getting great Oscar buzz this year. Based on the international best-seller by Stieg Larsson, written by Steve Zaillian (Schindler's List), and shot by Jeff Cronenweth, who lensed Fight Club and The Social Network, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a suspenseful, violent and downright creepy tale of a crusading Swedish journalist (played by James Bond star Daniel Craig) and messed-up, but brilliant, hacker (Rooney Mara) as an odd couple who team up to solve an old murder mystery. After shooting with the Red One for the first time on The Social Network, Fincher and Cronen- weth again shot with the Red. The arduous 160-day shoot included locations in Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and London, with Above: Steven Spielberg ––– directing on the set of War Horse. interiors being shot on stage at the Paramount lot and Red Studios Hollywood. Out of the 160-day shoot, the DP estimates that over 120 days were shot on the Red One with the MX chip. "As more cards became available and the workflow became more simplified, from the Epic to Red Rocket software and the ability to have it done by your own editorial staff, we migrated to using the Epics more," reports Cronenweth. At press time, Fincher was still deep in post and the final mix. (See Post's November cover story on www.postmagazine.com.) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2, the acclaimed climactic final chapter in the decade- long cinematic series, conjures up an equally dark, dangerous and ominous world, and may get some Oscar love for director David Yates and DP Eduardo Serra, who shot the last two Potter films back-to- back. Serra shot the film on Arri cameras with Cooke lenses, and says that, "I have always been at ease to play with the darkness in my other cinematographies, but most of the times this creates some resistance from the film director or producers. What I loved about the last film is that David pushed me to go dark, which all cinematographers love to do, so I was happily surprised that he and David Haymman and David Barron (the producers) were willing to make sure that we created nights as dark as possible, and the darkness was important for this last episode of the Harry Potter saga." He also notes that while the only Harry Potter film to be released in 3D wasn't shot in 3D, the conversion to 3D in post made it look "even darker than it was." Serra also had to contend with a multitude of night shoots and omnipresent visual effects work. "We had so much greenscreen work, in almost every scene," he reports. "We had plates and everybody was on the same stage." Stressing the role of post in the production, Serra says he has "always been very involved in post. For me it is a major part of my responsibility. On this I shared my work with Peter Doyle, a magic colorist, and we did the post at the Leavesden Studios, near London. The night scenes in the forest are very dark, and we worked on actors' faces in post produc- tion only." Summing up, the DP says, "I find the film beautiful with its dark, gothic and magic atmosphere." There's period and retro, and then there's The Artist, a silent film so retro that it may appeal to the very oldest Academy voters without any sense of irony involved. Shot in B&W, with no dialogue, the French period piece about a '20s silent film star whose career collapses with the advent of talkies was predictably a crowd- pleaser and critical success at Cannes last year (Jean Dujardin in the title role won Best Actor). Writer/director Michel Hazanavicius shot his homage to silent films at Red Studios Hollywood, and DP Guillaume Schiffman shot the film in 500 ASA color on Panavision cameras. The color was then converted to B&W in post in Paris. Oscar-winner Clint Eastwood (see Post's exclusive interview with the director in on page 12 of this issue) teamed with Leonardo DiCaprio to make J. Edgar, a biopic (a perennial Oscar favorite genre) about J. Edgar Hoover, America's top cop for five decades who helped create the FBI. Co-starring Naomi Watts and Armie Hammer (The Social Network), the film traces Hoover's life from childhood to his death in 1972, and DiCaprio's aging make-up and prosthetics could well earn an Oscar nod on its own. Eastwood once again teamed with such regular collaborators as DP Tom Stern, who teamed with East- wood on Invictus, Gran Torino and Changeling among others, and editors Joel Cox (Oscar-winner for Unfor- given) and Gary Roach. The DI was done at Tech- nicolor. (See our interview with Joel Cox in the December issue of Post.) Alexander Payne shot his new film, The Descendants, starring George Clooney, entirely www.postmagazine.com Post • January 2012 23